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Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#291

Post by theptip »

JackFr wrote: post #207
theptip wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the paper's abstract, definitely just bad science reporting. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35395195/

I don't know. I just don't see it. The subject is given two tasks requiring working memory. The researchers observe activity in the parietal and visual cortices via fMRI, and find the neural activity between the two tasks is indistinguishable. And conclude > ... distinct visual stimuli (oriented gratings and moving dots) are flexibly recoded into the same WM format in visual and parietal cortices when that representa…

I read it as saying they actually got topographical line-like structures in the MRI, similarly to the well established result that there are typographically-arranged visual neurons that essentially light up like pixels in response to a scene.

So if that’s right then they are actually measuring a spatial encoding. Anyway, it’s just the abstract so I could be completely wrong.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#292

Post by Emanation »

It doesn't compress jack fuck all. There is no black board sketch. Specific qualia have a higher cortical resonance, due to overarching reinforcement over time, and they are picked out.

Calling that compression is like calling a string search for the word 'it' compression. Of course, it's not even a string search, all the little unnoticed things still produce some kind a response, and thus changw in the brain structure, memory, might as well call it noise at some point due to the lack of neurons that give a fuck.

It's idiotic.

The more a single stream of information is focused on, the greater degree of resonance that may occur with less endowed qualia (slow down, notice more shit due to neuro-satiation).

Garbage pop article.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#293

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

gjm11 wrote: post #233
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a presentation once (It was not recorded, so I can't link it) that said the difference between real intelligence and artificial intelligence is the ability to quickly learn. As an example, he said imagine if he invented a word. Poditon. And he told us that a poditon is any object that can fit on a podium. Instantly, you know whether or not any object can be classified as a poditon. A laptop is a poditon, but a…

So, I tried this out with GPT-3 in the OpenAI Playground. (The model called text-davinci-002.) My prompt looked like this: Definition: A blorple is anything that is red and more or less round. Question: Is a tennis ball a blorple? Answer: No, because although tennis balls are round they aren't red. Question: Is a cherry a blorple? Answer: Yes, because cherries are red and approximately round. Definition: A poditon is…

FWIW, the presentation was in 2018, and GPT-3 came out in 2020.

But yeah, that's pretty amazing.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#294

Post by Ezku »

Emanation wrote: post #292

It doesn't compress jack fuck all. There is no black board sketch. Specific qualia have a higher cortical resonance, due to overarching reinforcement over time, and they are picked out. Calling that compression is like calling a string search for the word 'it' compression. Of course, it's not even a string search, all the little unnoticed things still produce some kind a response, and thus changw in the brain structu…

I do often share this sentiment, even if I’m not in agreement with your tone. But I’m curious —

  > Specific qualia have a higher cortical resonance, due to overarching reinforcement over time, and they are picked out.  
  > The more a single stream of information is focused on, the greater degree of resonance that may occur with less endowed qualia (slow down, notice more shit due to neuro-satiation).
How did you come upon these conclusions, or this framing? I’m surprised, because what you’re saying meshes well with some details of a model for the neurophysiological basis of conscious experience I’ve been working on… and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else point out these exact connections before.

For all I know this could be general knowledge in some community; or something believed widely at one time, now discredited. I’m operating in a vacuum and have been putting things together from what to me appear to be first principles. I might be reconstructing common knowledge, or just unknowingly restating things I’ve unconsciously absorbed in the past… The potential for which bothers me now that I’m seeing your comment.

Where’s your perspective coming from? :) Pointers to your sources would be much appreciated.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#295

Post by Ezku »

Lyapunov_Lover wrote: post #244
throwawaygo wrote: post #235

Surprise!! The human brain compresses all experience into low-res summaries. Full res is not possible. :D

It doesn't, actually. There are high-res versions of important events. The locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system act in concerto with the amygdala to induce protein synthesis in the hippocampus to produce vivid episodic memories. It gets rewritten every time it's accessed, but it doesn't become abstracted away like the memory of mundane events. Semantic memory is what we call our repertoire of facts and gists and othe…

Great information & a good summary, thank you! If I’m looking to get more in-depth with the known mechanisms of locus coeruleus and episodic memory, would you be able to recommend any sources of yours?

To try and tickle your interest, here’s why I’m looking into it: I have no episodic memory. I have aphantasia. I have hypotheses for explanations that I’m looking to correlate with different pieces of research, and locus coeruleus interactions is one area I have yet to look sufficiently deeply into.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#297

Post by nicoburns »

sethrin wrote: post #262
nicoburns wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Myers-briggs is fundamentally non-empirical. Empirical evidence is certainly lacking for it, but I think there's a good argument to be made that this is due to poor experimental design (for example applying the categorisations to persons rather than to mental processes) and a general difficulty in empirically measuring internal mental processes (it's notable that more mainstream competitors to the Myers…

No, Meyers-Briggs is fundamentally non-empirical, it has no empirical validity, nor was it derived from any empirical process. If you have a personal faith in its validity then I'm sure I don't mean to disrespect that.

If you're talking about the testing instrument itself, then sure I don't think it's great. But if you're talking about the underlying theory (and that's much more interesting - when we discuss physics we talk about the theory of relativity not the tools we use to measure it) then I would like to point out that the theory (lets call it Jungian Type Theory - JTT) was derived from an empirical process. Specifically it was derived from Jung's observations as a clinician over several decades. That's not a controlled experiment, but it's certainly empirical.

Regarding my personal experience with it: I have personally found it highly useful as a predictive model of behaviour. It's the only thing I've found that allows me to explain the aspects of people's personalities that aren't easily explained by their environment or life experiences. And by combining with JTT with an understanding of someone's life experience and environment I've found that I can pretty much always find a satisfying explanation for someone's behaviour in a way that I am not able to do with either one individually.

Regarding its validity:

- Firstly, there's no need to tiptoe around the subject if you think it's bullshit. I won't be offended, and I can totally understand why might be skeptical given the experimental evidence that exists so far.

- Having said that, I would like to challenge to idea that we ought to expect JTT to be experimentally validated given how limited our current ability to inspect the brain is. Specifically (and unlike other models of personality) the theory's primary claims are that there are certain internal thinking processes, which of course we currently have no way of observing directly, and which will not necessarily correspond straightforwardly or 1:1 with observable behaviours (environmental and life experience factors being huge confounders).

- Given this I find it entirely unsurprising that experimental designs which rely on numerical scorings of observed behaviours fail to find an effect

- I think it no coincidence that this theory came out of clinical psychology, because you need to be able to control for the environmental and life-experience factors in order to be able to see the other pattern that is (well ok, might be) sitting there beneath them. And therapeutic relationships which continue over a number of years are one of the only scenarios where that context is available outside of close personal relationships.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#299

Post by quickthrower2 »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #4

It all works this way (though a certain female family member would disagree, claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later). But my memory works this way. A summary "party at so-and-so's house, weather was nice, overall vibe was ___". The rest is context. You know what the house/backyard is like, you know the general feel of that time of year, you know the crowd that usually comes, you can easily synth…

I am more likely to remember the house floorplan of a party than who was there or the conversations. Even years later.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#300

Post by quickthrower2 »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #42
ThalesX wrote: post #8

As someone suffering from Aphantasia [0] (I don't have mental imagery at all) and I've been telling people for the longest time that this is how I relate to the world. I summarize things. Even my mother's face. A post by a Facebook engineer [1] felt like a good way to understand it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia [1] https://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/medic...

I am very interested in the topic, and have been looking into it for ages. I think most people vastly exaggerate their ability to visualize anything. Most people can't really hold a square or a sphere in their mind, rotate it, or change colors. The only people who truly can are really good artists. My point - you may be mis-diagnosing yourself, especially since aphantasia doesn't seem to have clear tests or definitio…

I could do all that as a kid. Was almost a hobby. Not so much now.
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